He said freeing transit commuters from clogged downtown streets means those buses won’t be stuck.

“They’re not crossing through intersections anymore. They’re not dealing with right or left turning cars, they’re not dealing with parked delivery trucks,” he said. “That will all be gone.”

The $2.1-billion Confederation Line will run underground the length of downtown, eliminating the current bus lanes on Albert and Slater.

Scrimgeour said buses are also going to be doing shorter routes once the Confederation Line opens, dropping passengers off at the LRT stations rather than driving into downtown.

“Because they’re shorter routes they will be able to turn around and go back again,” he said.

Coun. Mathieu Fleury, who has been tracking local routes in his area, said he’s hopeful routes can be changed once the Confederation Line opens to keep the frequently cancelled routes in his community on the road more often.

Scrimgeour said while he understands people’s frustrations, the city is benefiting from smart decisions in the past, as well as hopefully the Confederation Line in the future.

“We know the decision to build the transitway, in the 70’s and then building it in the 80’s was massively beneficial for people living further out,” he said. Imagine if we were trying to move everyone from Kanata, Stittsville and Barrhaven without the Transitway.

Tracking progress

This is the last part of our look for this week, but Metro intends to continue to look into the data on bus cancellations.

We will continue tracking if the problems grows or shrinks and what the most cancelled routes continue to be, publishing regular updates on the problem.